Nipponica

When meeting Jon Heese for the first time, you could be forgiven for thinking you’ve run into Bill Clinton. He often jokes that his resemblance to the former U.S. president is what won him his first election in Japan. However, Heese hails from farther north: the vast plains of Saskatchewan, Canada.

“I grew up in a small village where I could see the horizon 50 kilometers away,” he says. “Saskatchewan residents joke that they can see their dog running away for three days.”

Ibaraki is lush by comparison. Heese, 62, gushes about its flowers in spring, plus locally grown fresh fruit and vegetables all year round. “Tsukuba is especially beautiful with more than 400 parks as well as majestic Mount Tsukuba guarding our city.”

He might be biased, considering he was elected as a Tsukuba municipal assemblyman for four terms, from 2008 to 2014 and again from 2016 until 2022, when he was elected to the Ibaraki Prefectural Assembly on his second attempt, after coming close in 2014. This makes Heese one of the very few foreign-born politicians in Japan.

As a former Tsukuba resident, I met Jon once and he is a good model on how a foreign-born person can make an impact in Japanese politics.